Metro Boston’s largest all-documentary festival, the 10th annual Salem Film Fest, swings into a crazy weekend of great films of all shapes and sizes for your filmgoing pleasure. Films to enlighten and inform, films that will make you see the world from the subject’s point of view. They may make you laugh or cry, make you angry or overjoyed, make things clearer or muddier in the world view, but they will DEFINITELY NOT be boring!
Sunday is another day filled with a variety of diverse films for you to check out and make the difficult decisions of which films you want to see. I don’t envy you your choices either…:-)
As always, screenings take place at CinemaSalem and the Morse Auditorium at Peabody Essex Museum, with select screenings at the National Park Service Visitors Center. Another cool thing about SFF – all three primary venues are a stones’ throw from each other – you can easily walk between the three venues in under five minutes, which is NOT the case for some other local festivals which schedule screenings at venues that are 20 or more minutes apart, so you get stuck in traffic, or get stuck on the T, and risk missing something. With SFF, it’s just NOT possible.
Here’s Sunday’s lineup, in alphabetical order – descriptions of the films are below, and are taken directly from the SFF official website at http://salemfilmfest.com!
AFTER SPRING
Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan has been the “temporary” home of 80,000 Syrians since 2012. Meet two families who long for a permanent home as they contemplate an uncertain future.
CHEER UP
Life is tough for a team of teen cheerleaders from Finland’s Arctic Circle who, no matter how hard they try to get better and look perfect, always place last.
DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS
A brutal murder on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border triggers a suspenseful journey that exposes the complex socio-political consequences of killing the Dominican forests, one cut at a time.
FRONTLINE PRESENTS AFTER SOLITARY VIRTUAL REALITY
FRONTLINE presents a Virtual Reality experience as they take you inside the Maine State Prison to learn what life was like in solitary confinement for former inmate Kenny Moore.
FRONTLINE PRESENTS LAST DAYS OF SOLITARY (SNEAK PEEK)
Follow what happens to recently released prisoners when they go from solitary to the streets.
THE GROWN UPS
A compassionate glimpse into the lives of Down Syndrome adults who long for more independence and challenge than they have working in the bakery at the school they’ve attended for decades.
THE PEACEMAKER
In the heart of the world’s most intractable conflicts, Cambridge, Massachusetts resident Padraig O’Malley tries to broker peace using the unorthodox methods and dogged determination he discovered while battling his own addictions.
SHORTS BLOCK 1
A collection of short documentary films.
SHORTS BLOCK 2
A collection of short documentary films.
WINTER AT WESTBETH
A year in the lives of three longtime residents of a New York West Village artist community as they pursue their creative passions well into their 70s, 80s and 90s.
ZIMBELISM
Remarkable tales from the darkroom on Marilyn Monroe, JFK and others from one of the last working elders of street photography, humanist photographer George S. Zimbel.
Today’s Schedule looks like this:
CINEMASALEM
Shorts Block 1 10:00 AM
The Grown-Ups 12:40 PM
Cheer Up 2:40 PM
Death By A Thousand Cuts 5:10 PM
The Peacemaker 7:30 PM
MORSE AUDITORIUM @ PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM
Zimbelism 10:50 AM
Frontline presents Last Days Of Solitary (Sneak Peek) 1:45 PM
Winter At Westbeth 5:05 PM
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE VISITORS CENTER
Frontline Presents AFter Solitary virtual Reality 11:00 AM
Shorts Block 2 12:15 PM
After Spring 2:40 PM
Tickets can be purchased at the Salem Film Fest website, or at CinemaSalem during regular business hours. Make sure you get your tickts early – it is not uncommon for many of the screenings, especially those held at CinemaSalem, to be SOLD OUT. Don’t wait to get your tickets until the last minute – get them as soon as you can!
Instead of an afterparty tonight, you need to head out early today – to the Filmmaker Breakfast this morning at Caffe Graziani – all usual breakfast foods are served, it’s a cash breakfast, and takes place from 10-11 AM!
With the weekend almost done, SFF will settle in for a few more evenings of great entertainment as the week continues – be here tomorrow morning for Monday evening’s lineup!